Simple to_string function in C

Most languages have ways to serialize objects to strings. But ofcourse, C does not have any. The difficulty of creating one in C, is that the string representation of the object must be freed afterwards. Let us say you have a Rectangle type with the fields x, y, width and height. You might write its to_string function like this:

char * rect_to_string (Rectangle *rect) { char buf[256]; snprintf (buf, 256, "(%d, %d)-(%d, %d)", rect->x, rect->y, rect->width, rect->height); return strdup (buf); }

Note that memory is allocated. A client must therefore make sure to deallocate the string when it is done with it:

char *s = rect_to_string (my_rect); printf ("my_rect is %s\n", s); free (s);

If you forget to free the string bad things will of course happen. You must also not use it inline:

printf ("my_rect is %s\n", rect_to_string (my_rect));

Because that will leak memory. The memory allocated inside strdup continues to live on, but the reference to that memory is gone. What you can, and should do, is to use a static buffer.

char * rect_to_string (Rectangle *rect) { static char buf[256]; snprintf (buf, 256, "(%d, %d)-(%d, %d)", rect->x, rect->y, rect->width, rect->height); return buf; }

Since no memory is allocated, the inline approach works ok. However, if you want the string to survive for any longer periods of times you must still allocate it. The following code demonstrates the bug.

char *rect1_str = rect_to_str (rect1); char *rect2_str = rect_to_str (rect2); printf ("The rectangles are: %s %s\n", rect1_str, rect2_str);

Both variables will point to the same static buffer. And because rect_to_string overwrites the contents of that buffer, only the string representation of rect2 will survive. The solution to this problem is to explicitly allocate strings that must survive:

char *rect1_str = strdup (rect_to_str (rect1)); char *rect2_str = strdup (rect_to_str (rect2)); printf ("The rectangles are: %s %s\n", rect1_str, rect2_str); free (rect1_str); free (rect2_str);

Even with this quirk, I believe the last method is superior. It is very nice to be able to just print out the contents of a struct such as a Rectangle and not have worry about memory problems.